


All my stumbling phrases

by guineapiggie



Series: All This (and Heaven Too) [2]
Category: The Hour (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, mention of suicide quoted from the show, set mostly after s1? but not entirely idek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 16:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21211586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guineapiggie/pseuds/guineapiggie
Summary: Yes, you stop wanting to slash your wrists every time you see her. But you remember considering it, on the odd occasion, and every second or third time she looks at you, you could start crying on the spot.He hadn’t told Hector that, partly because he didn’t think it would have comforted him very much, and partly because he would at least claim that special brand of pain for himself, if he could have nothing else. It was petty, and quite probably not even true, but he allowed himself that much.





	All my stumbling phrases

**Author's Note:**

> yeah. same song. Actually makes more sense here.

> _But with all my education_  
_I can't seem to commend it_  
_And the words are all escaping_  
_And coming back all damaged_  
_And I would put them back in poetry_  
_If I only knew how I can't seem to understand it_
> 
> _And I would give all this and heaven too_  
_I would give it all if only for a moment_  
_That I could just understand _  
_The meaning of the word you see_  
_'Cause I've been scrawling it forever_  
_But it never makes sense to me at all_
> 
> _No, words are a language_  
_It doesn't deserve such treatment_  
_And all my stumbling phrases_  
_Never amounted to anything worth this feeling_
> 
> **\- Florence + the machine: All This and Heaven Too**

It was a ritual at this point, a strange habit that either boredom or pressure would drive him to. Sometimes he liked to tell himself that it was relaxing, even – but he’d never been a very good liar, and it wasn’t true.

He tapped his pencil against the notebook page, idly, not really planning to write anything. The words wouldn’t come. They never did.

Oh, what he wouldn’t give… but what did that mean, coming from him? What did he _have _to give, really? Next to nothing, by ways of material wealth. Less than nothing, in fact – Christ, he barely had a shirt in his own name, almost everything he wore was his father’s, washed out, stitched up, out of fashion, and at least one size too large. A few battered books, a few photographs, a broken umbrella, a worn bag, and a dead man’s coat.

Who was he? A nobody, really – a smart one, he’d give himself that, a perceptive, hard-working, passionate, well-read nobody. _Of sound mind and body, _as they said, at least so far. If he kept going the way he did – and Freddie couldn’t imagine stopping, not for the life of him – then who knew how long he’d remain that way. He felt insane, half the time. _Soviet spies, _for God’s sake, that sure sounded like a damn fever dream.

All he had was his stubborn refusal to let go of anything he’d ever sunken his teeth into. He’d been like this since childhood, wolfing down whatever the grown-ups put in front of him, be it his mother’s burnt eggs or the fine dinners at the Elms’s, picking up on every unfinished sentence, every unturned stone. Every story, every lead, and Bel, always Bel – he couldn’t let any of it go, not for the sake of his career nor his colleagues nor his sanity.

All he had was his stubbornness, and his words. And what good were those? What good were those when they never came up to scratch? Oh, he got close. He got very close, he _was _good, damn it, he was, he always had been – but not good enough. How frustrating, how _disappointing _language could be, when it so continuously failed to do what it was supposed to. Nothing would ever do, not poetry, not the great authors that his professors used to wax poetically about… and he’d attempted himself, hadn’t he, many times. How much paper, he wondered sometimes, had he wasted, trying to catch that elusive word, that turn of the phrase that would convey –

He’d been trying for so long that he wasn’t even sure anymore why he was doing it. He didn’t know anymore what he hoped it would achieve. All he knew was that he needed her – that he needed _anyone, _just bloody anyone to _understand_. He couldn’t say if he was hoping it would change her mind, but that wasn’t why. It was just… she had an idea, he knew that much, a pretty decent idea, but it just… she just _barely_ missed the point at every turn. It was agonising.

Words were supposed to be his asset, his weapon of choice. But they eluded him where it counted most, where they had to come up to _his _standards, not the rest of the world’s. Where they had to come up to a deep, quiet, unbearable truth that he felt but could neither fully understand nor ever explain. God, it was maddening. Those months he’d spent lying on his dusty floor, staring at the ceiling and tracing the edges of that cursed photograph with his fingers until they bled – he wasn’t sure if they’d been caused by the agony of being loved and yet unwanted, or by the crippling inability to put that feeling into words in a way that translated its full meaning but didn’t sound trite, or dramatic.

He hadn’t told Hector the half of it. _Yes, you stop wanting to slash your wrists every time you see her. But you remember considering it, on the odd occasion, and every second or third time she looks at you, you could start crying on the spot._

He hadn’t told Hector that, partly because he didn’t think it would have comforted him very much, and partly because he would at least claim that special brand of pain for himself, if he could have nothing else. It was petty, and quite probably not even true, but he allowed himself that much. He allowed himself to think that look on Hector’s face had nothing to do with the splinter in the pit of his stomach, with the torturous, treacherous hope that bubbled up ever so often. It was a small, victimless delusion, and he indulged himself.

.

(He had an epiphany. At, admittedly, an inopportune moment. Inspired by a less than impressive man. No matter.

_Impossible. _The word had knocked something loose in him, something that had been stuck, and it had all fallen into place. Enough talk. Enough bloody talking.

_Impossible. _

_Yes_, he thought with a smile, twisting his pencil between his fingers, _yes, Mr Kendall. Maybe for you._)


End file.
